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/lit/ - Literature

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Anonymous Thu Jul 23 02:49:59 2020 No.15935148 [Reply] [Original]

What's the most try-hard book you've ever read?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 02:51:24 2020 No.15935154 >>15935148 anything by Nietzsche

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 02:51:43 2020 No.15935158 >>15935148 Beloved by Toni Morrison. Note that it is a good book, and at times excellent. (The epilogue in particular.) However, it is very try-hard.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 02:53:25 2020 No.15935162 >>15935158 Why is that?

Anonymous Thu Jul 23 02:58:46 2020 No.15935181

>>15935162
Well, at times you can tell Morrison put a great deal of effort into creating stream of consciousness style passages, which didn't always fly. The slave ship chapter in particular seemed to trying to convey an important message while using a strange structure. It kind of worked, but came off as try-hard.

I do recommend reading it, but I'd suggest starting with another Morrison novel. The following order:

The Bluest Eye -> Sula (my favorite) -> Song of Solomon -> Beloved

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 02:59:39 2020 No.15935183 >>15935148 Endless Joke

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 03:07:57 2020 No.15935218 Hero with a Thousand faces

Anonymous Thu Jul 23 03:10:36 2020 No.15935229

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I didn't feel like I got anything out of it. It took me a long fucking time to read despite being short because I barely ever understood what I was reading. I like James Joyce's books more as an idea, and less in the execution.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 03:14:01 2020 No.15935249 I tried really hard to get through all of Being and Time.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 03:15:35 2020 No.15935258 >>15935148 James Joyce

Anonymous Thu Jul 23 03:16:13 2020 No.15935262
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>>15935148
I was enthusiastically recommended Ligotti's short fiction by more than one person who knows my taste. I picked up the Penguin collection, I'm about 25% of the way through it, and I'm fairly disappointed. More so than any commonly respected writer I've ever read his prose sounds like someone who thinks very highly of his own intelligence, or at least wants his readers to think highly of his intelligence, despite the fact that he seems to mostly write in the first person, resulting in a not only insufferable, but pretty samey voice between stories. For the most part I like his ideas, but I find the way he writes to be the way a stuffy, painfully insecure college professor would talk. Maybe that's just his first collection and the second one is better?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 04:08:12 2020 No.15935549 >>15935148 Probably my own >>15935229 I kinda get that. Reading Portrait was a slog to get through sometimes, but it's also a book that I think about all the time

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 04:12:29 2020 No.15935566 >>15935549 >Probably my own Post incipit

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 04:14:29 2020 No.15935573 >>15935148 2666

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 04:38:36 2020 No.15935694 >>15935148 phenomenology of spirit

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 05:09:04 2020 No.15935888 >>15935148 the sound and the fury but i loved it

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 05:17:40 2020 No.15935947 >>15935148 I'll Spit On Your Graves by Boris Vian

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 05:18:08 2020 No.15935953 MALIGNANTLY USELESS

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 05:20:01 2020 No.15935964 That horrid book that was shilled on here for a few days. The Synthesis of Subjective and Objective? Utter trash, the biggest load of pseudo-intellectual nonsense I have read in years.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 06:58:33 2020 No.15936445 The Consumer It was very obvious that he was trying to be edgy as opposed to someone like Burroughs

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 07:03:38 2020 No.15936470 >>15935262 Ligotti is a necrotic mess, that's the point

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 07:07:44 2020 No.15936485 all of the meme books are try-hard so Joyce, Wallace, Pynchon, Gass, Nabokov

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 07:14:39 2020 No.15936522 >>15936470 it's beyond him.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 07:15:34 2020 No.15936527 >>15935229 literal /lit/ newfag here and i was just about to start reading dubliners. is it also difficult to read?

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 07:45:57 2020 No.15936648 >>15936527 No. It's Joyce's most approachable work by far.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 08:10:01 2020 No.15936765 Infinite Jest hands down

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 08:40:34 2020 No.15936904 >>15935148 Harassment Architecture

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 08:50:40 2020 No.15936957 >>15936527 No, Dubliners is fucking babytown easy compared to the rest of his work

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 08:59:26 2020 No.15937001 >>15935148 Steppenwolf

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 09:01:23 2020 No.15937007 >>15935229 Portrait is not difficult to read lol Granted it becomes rather cacophonous toward the end (which is the point) but the earlier sections of the book are exquisitely lucid

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 10:19:09 2020 No.15937492 >>15935148 Wittgenstein's Mistress or Infinite Jest.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 10:47:09 2020 No.15937705 >>15935262 I felt that way about Robert Aikman. He tries so hard to be literary his stories are often not very well rounded and unsatisfying

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 11:13:17 2020 No.15937923 >>15937001 why

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 11:49:53 2020 No.15938211 >>15935148 Harassment Architecture

Anonymous Thu Jul 23 11:49:53 2020 No.15938210

>>15936470
>>15936522
What's the point in writing short fiction if you're going to shade it with your personally color so heavily that every single story comes out exactly the same? All but one I can think of were written in the first person, but I've so read stories about a prison psychologist, a female children's author, various types of vaguely defined psychos, etc. and the way Ligotti writes all of them are indistinguishable from one another in character and tone. The plot and ideas seem to take a backseat to his insistence on samey, academic sounding prose, so you don't even have that. It feels like Ligotti set up a potentially interesting puppet show, only to stand in front of the stage shirtless and elaborately narrate everything while striking poses. Is Grimscribe better about this?

>>15937705
I haven't read Aikman, but he's a few names down the list. I'd definitely say most of Ligotti's stories have been unsatisfying. I can feel what he was going for each time, but it's like I'm more interested in the potential of his story than he was.

Anonymous Thu Jul 23 11:51:12 2020 No.15938220

>>15935229
My problem with Portrait is how repetitive it is. Stephen's erudite angst grows old long before the book is finished. Ulysses is much harder, of course, but the shift in styles between every episode makes it feel continuously fresh, like you're reading 18 smaller books instead of one doorstopper.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 13:35:10 2020 No.15939015 >>15935148 Jacob Boheme

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 13:40:48 2020 No.15939072 File: 40 KB, 474x630, 9780375703768_p0_v2_s1200x630.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 13:44:52 2020 No.15939096 >>15935158 >>15935181 >trying to bait me intro reading a niggeress never gonna happen

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 13:45:25 2020 No.15939099 my diary desu

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 13:46:22 2020 No.15939107 >>15935148 My diary desu.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 13:48:22 2020 No.15939123 >>15935148 Anything by Hegel

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 14:06:05 2020 No.15939255 >>15935148 War and Peace. Managed to read all of it when i was 11. Was only interested in the battles and Napoleon stuff, didn't bother with the all the pretentious bollocks in the book

>>	Old Man Thu Jul 23 14:08:57 2020 No.15939278 >>15939255 Yeah, I read The Master and Margarita when I was around 11, but just for the cat

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 15:53:04 2020 No.15940036 >>15936485 Imagine having such shit taste and announcing it to the world

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 17:18:01 2020 No.15940693 >>15935148 my diary, desu

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 20:16:32 2020 No.15942096 >>15939096 >getting filtered by Morrison Go read Sula, the nigger joke is something even the most bloodthirsty, hateful Pole can appreciate

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 20:24:22 2020 No.15942135 Augustine's Confessions Yes I get it, if it was condoned you'd wish to get SNM dominated by God. >every other fucking page starts with OH GOD something

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 20:24:54 2020 No.15942144 >>15936527 How far are you? I am reading dubliners as well and find it mediocre.

Anonymous Thu Jul 23 23:08:30 2020 No.15943156

The Ego and Its Own
The only interesting part for me was his discussion on protestantism and liberalism, everything on egoism itself made my eyes water, it was like reading an edgy teenagers diary. I was reading Fear and Trembling at the same time and it made stirner look like an asshat.

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 23:11:42 2020 No.15943177 >>15935148 Dialectic of Enlightenment The sentences and ideas are so fragmented and vaguely written in abstruse prose that I can't help but think Adorno and Horkheimer were just trying to become the new Hegel

>>	Anonymous Thu Jul 23 23:31:37 2020 No.15943315 >>15935148 Anti-Oedipus, still good though.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 00:48:02 2020 No.15943952 Anything by Thomas Mann.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 01:15:56 2020 No.15944163 >>15935154 Literal Baby tier

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 01:21:29 2020 No.15944204 >>15942135 >book is called Confessions >gets mad because is a confession the absolute state

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 02:05:24 2020 No.15944485 >>15942096 No one is filtered by your ape

>>	noglin Fri Jul 24 02:06:46 2020 No.15944488 File: 27 KB, 499x357, 41tyokViuNL._SY355_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>15935148 This shit

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 02:06:54 2020 No.15944490 >>15935148 Phenomenology of Spirit and it's not even close

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 02:14:08 2020 No.15944541 Maybe Wilhelm Misters Apprenticeship? If we're not counting Ulysses or IJ which were intentionally tryhard.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 02:22:53 2020 No.15944596 House of Leaves

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 02:50:36 2020 No.15944745 >>15944488 Filtered me hard when I was just starting out

Anonymous Fri Jul 24 03:06:05 2020 No.15944834

>>15935262
The second collection is leagues better in my opinion but there is still that thread of highfalutin prose and sameness you were talking about that is present in the stories. I really disliked how several of the stories ended in the same fashion, with the narrator saying something like “I can hear them coming for me now…” or and then abruptly ending.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 03:08:26 2020 No.15944847 >>15938210 Grimscribe is definitely better. The first story blew me away.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 03:36:27 2020 No.15944996 >>15942096 If you want to fit in this hard you should stop reading black people.

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 03:46:13 2020 No.15945049 >>15935888 Faulkner is insanely try hard but he can get away with it somehow

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 07:25:45 2020 No.15945960 >>15935181 did not expect you to not be meming about her being a woman author. Amazing

>>	Anonymous Fri Jul 24 07:27:42 2020 No.15945969 >>15936485 Pale Fire is the best try hard book.

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